Busy: A Four Letter Word

Sometimes telling friends you’re “crazy busy” is the easiest way to get some alone time, writes Rachel Dodes.

Last year, a colleague saw me violently throwing out a stack of invitations and murmuring to nobody in particular, “Please stop inviting me to things.” She found this funny, but I wasn’t joking.

Everyone is talking about “The ‘Busy’ Trap,” an article that ran in the New York Times last weekend. The story, by author Tim Kreider, currently has 813 comments, was the most emailed article on NYTimes.com through yesterday, has been tweeted thousands of times, and shared by almost everybody I know on Facebook.

“Trust me, you’re not too busy to read this,” wrote one of my friends. “I don’t care how busy you are—take a few minutes and read this,” wrote another. On Slate, Hanna Rosin tied the kerfuffle over the newest “B” word to the other Big Debate over whether or not women can have it all. (Spoiler alert: they cannot, and neither can men.)

In the aftermath of “The ‘Busy’ Trap,” it seems that telling somebody that you’re really busy is some kind of horrific humble brag, a statement that only self-involved people who lack any perspective or inner life would say. But I think that this misses the point, which is that telling somebody that you are really busy remains the only socially acceptable way to avoid events hosted by people you aren’t that into.

I mean, what are you supposed to say? “Uh, sorry, but I have no interest in hanging out?”

Even assuming that you don’t loathe the people who are asking you to hang out, if you start making too many plans with them, all of a sudden—voilà!—you become busy, overscheduled and overwhelmed. So saying “I’m too busy” is, ironically, an extremely effective and non-confrontational way to protect oneself from becoming too busy. The “B” word, at least until everybody started talking about the “Busy Trap” this week, was once a secret shield, a beautiful (and somewhat true) white lie to create some personal, private space in a chaotic world.

In that sense, I agree with Mr. Kreider. Taking time to relax and unwind is extremely important for nurturing one’s creativity. “History is full of stories of inspirations that come in idle moments and dreams,” he says.

The problem is, “I’m spending time at home idly seeking inspiration,” is not, for whatever reason, an acceptable answer to the question “Why can’t you hang out tonight?”

Mr. Kreider relays the story of a friend who, when asked if he wanted to get together this week, responded that he didn’t have a lot of time to escape work, but suggested that Mr. Kreider ping him if something was going on. His busy-ness “was like some vast churning noise through which he was shouting out at me, and I gave up trying to shout back over it,” he wrote. I couldn’t help but wonder: Maybe having him give up was the friend’s objective. Or perhaps the friend just wanted to hang out at home with his significant other and watch back episodes of “The Real Housewives of New York City” on DVR but was too embarrassed to admit it.

It’s also true that saying “I’m crazy busy” in response to the typical “how’s it going?” question has become a major cliché. Let’s face it: Everyone is busy to some extent or another, particularly in a big city like New York. Talking about how busy you are is idle banter about one intimacy grade above talking about the weather, and probably less useful. But it’s also a convenient, non-personal topic that everyone can relate to, a sort of verbal tic that people can spew when they’re bored, tired, or not interested in telling the truth about how it is really going. Because, when it’s not going well, “busy” is beautifully unassailable.

For Tim Kreider, fleeing to an undisclosed location, where he says he wrote “The ‘Busy’ Trap,” was the only solution to the inexorable doom spiral of busy-ness. For me, a reporter at a daily newspaper in a major metropolitan area (a region, I might add where my parents, sister, cousins and best friends from high school, college and graduate school also happen to live) going to an undisclosed location unfortunately isn’t a long-term solution.

So what should I do to carve out more idleness? I asked a therapist recently who advised me to just tell people I am too busy.

Comments (5 of 58)

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3:25 am July 25, 2012

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6:30 pm July 20, 2012

Aspectus PR wrote :

Tim raises some valid concerns about our culture’s perception of busyness, but does not take into account the possibility of being happily busy. Tim’s point is that more and more of our population has been unnecessarily busy, however, many people thrive on busyness for greater productivity and to stimulates out-of-the-box thinking. That’s not to say that we don’t require a break every once in a while, but that’s exactly what it is, a break from busyness, not a lifestyle. If we took more guilt-free breaks, perhaps we’d be able to find a happy balance. Aspectus PR recently posted an article arguing just that http://www.aspectuspr.com/blog/2012/07/why-putting-productivity-into-busyness-means-business/.

2:14 pm July 9, 2012

Anonymous wrote :

"we can’t make it because DS3 has a hockey tournament that weekend in Buffalo."
but they do want to know this because then they can say to others, "Oh, they are at the hockey tournamnent in Buffalo" with a didn't-they-tell-you attitude.

But honestly for me, what is harder is saying no because it follows a busy weekend. In other words, yes I have Sunday dinner time slot open but I know I will not feel like cooking for you or even going to a restaurant because I spent Sunday afternoon at a basketball game, Sunday morning at church, Saturday night at a fund raiser, Saturday afternoon at a basketball game, Saturday morning doing laundry and getting groceries, Friday night at a movie and the whole previous week at work. Sometimes we have to block out down time. We plan to have no plans, if that makes sense.
Try it !

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The Juggle examines the choices and tradeoffs people make as they juggle work and family. The site provides readers with news, insight and tips on parenting, workplace issues, commuting, caregiving and other issues busy readers with families face. It is also a place for readers to share and compare their own work-and-family experiences and to seek advice and recommendations. The Juggle is includes regular contributions from other staffers at the Journal. Contact the Juggle with ideas or suggestions at thejuggle@wsj.com